Windy Wellington

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We are in Wellington at the moment and it SO windy. We arrived on Monday by ferry and the crossing was very smooth which was surprising as when we left Kaikoura it was raining and very windy and the car was buffeted the whole way. We did read in the paper on Tuesday that there had been hurricane winds all over NZ with lots of forest fires is some regions and over 170mm of rain in 24hrs in others. For once it was not raining on us!

Yesterday we explored the city. It is a great city and we both really liked it although it was very quiet. There was hardly any traffic at all. We started out our tour by getting the cable car (it is really a funicular) to the botanical gardens. We walked around there for a while working our way down into the city. We then went to the parliament buildings. They are a bit of an eclectic mix of styles. The most well known is probably The Beehive which gets its name from its shape. It was designed by Sir Basil Spence (of Coventry Cathedral fame) and is 70's architecture at its best (or worst!)

After that we went on a walk up Mount Victoria. It is nearly 200m high so you get really good panoramic views over Wellington. By this point it was getting really windy and we nearly got blown off the top!

By the evening it had got even windier and in the night I thought the windows were going to blow in! It was quite literally blowing a gale.

Thankfully today was not so windy (although it was still pretty blowy) - I don't think Wellington is named the Windy City for nothing. We decided to visit Te Papa which is a huge museum that focuses on New Zealand. We pretty much spent our whole day in there as there is so much to see. It is a bit like the Natural History museum in places with displays about things native to NZ. There were also displays about how NZ was formed as well as information on Maori.

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